


call it what you want to

by psikeval



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 01:16:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13202583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: Nobody ever made strides towards personal growth by dwelling on how often they think about Chris Hemsworth while masturbating; of this he is certain.or, there are three Chrises on set, and Tom hatesevery single one of them.





	call it what you want to

**Author's Note:**

> what i've done here owes its existence to so many people: helen & robin, for beta-reading and boundless enthusiasm; camille & ruth, for screaming with me in a grave of our own making; and a whole slew of folks who watched it happen with patience, perhaps while thinking "oh god she's doing it again won't somebody stop this." to all the ones who enabled, encouraged and exacerbated this dark terrible spiral: thank you, from the bottom of my hell. or heart or whatever. you're the real heroes. now please never speak to me or my chris hemsworth gif collection ever again.

 

 

\--

 

“Morning,” Chris Evans greets him cheerfully by the refreshment table.

Tom has just finished a few test runs with Josh in a mo-cap suit, and is stirring his third cup of overly honeyed Earl Grey. He’s had a sore throat for the past few days, since the night he arrived, and refuses to let it turn into a cold, no matter how many strange home remedies and Vitamin C packets are required. “Hi,” he replies, smiling despite his exhaustion.

There’s a plate of croissants on the table, and Evans beelines towards them with the intensity of a man being slowly destroyed by his Captain America diet. “How you holding up, man?”

“Fine,” Tom assures him, touched by his concern. “I suspect it’s just the jet lag.”

Evans gives him a half-pitying look and laughs. “Yeaaah,” he drawls, gesturing with his coffee cup at something over Tom’s shoulder, “I kinda meant with _that_ , actually.”

‘ _That’_ , humiliatingly enough, is Chris Hemsworth, who is walking up to them while looking like six feet and three inches of Tom’s more vivid wet dreams. He’s been running, or at the gym, or some combination of both, and his thin grey t-shirt is soaked with sweat and clinging to every damned enormous muscle in Chris’s body. His arms are _glistening_ , for fuck’s sake.

“Hey!” He greets them both with a quick wave before turning all his attention on Tom. “I know we won’t be filming for a bit, but I wanted to run some stuff by you, kind of get some ideas for how we play the fallout with Thor and Loki, post-Tesseract. Maybe coffee, around ten?”

“Ah, um. Yes? I mean, sure, yeah. That’s. Hm,” Tom coughs. “Whenever suits you.”

“Great,” Chris says, grins, and jogs off. Tom stares rather helplessly at his ass, and at the immensity of his shoulders, until Chris turns a corner and disappears from view.

Evans thumps him across the shoulders. “Nice. Classy. Your poise, I think, is what sells it.”

“Damn you,” Tom says with feeling, before burying his face in his hands.

 

\--

 

It started during filming of the very first _Thor_ , and that alone is painful for Tom to admit, because it means years, _years_ of his life, spent carrying a torch in the worst sort of way. Seven years, to be precise. Seven dreadful, besotted years. He tries very hard not to think about it.

Worse still, he can recall with terrible clarity the exact moment that sealed his fate.

One unremarkable day, Tom went looking for Chris around set. He wanted to ask him a question, or see if he wanted food, or some other stupid, insignificant thing, and so he poked his head into Chris’s trailer, as he often did, and said, “Hey, could I borrow you for a moment?”

Or something to that effect. It wasn’t _important_ , is the point, and Tom fully intended to put off the matter, whatever it was, if he couldn’t easily locate Chris — or if Chris were busy, or sleeping, as seemed more likely the longer Tom waited in the doorway. He was really, truly ready to simply give it up and leave when from the vicinity of the bedroom came Chris’s reply.

“Yeah, just a minute,” he called out, and Tom, an _idiot_ , looked toward the sound of his voice.

Because, in fact, just down the cramped hallway of the trailer, Chris Hemsworth had clearly just emerged from the shower and was completely, gloriously naked.

He’d thrown a towel over his entire head and was scrubbing his hair dry with both hands, the heavy corded muscles in each arm flexing with every movement. Chris was still dripping wet, droplets of water trickling down his chest and muscled abdomen, the rounded swell of his ass, the cut of his hips and, _and_. Tom’s mouth went completely dry, staring helplessly at his cock.

It was even larger than he expected, soft and thick between Chris’s thighs, and honestly, Tom still doesn’t know what’s worse—that he had _expectations_ at all, because dear god that had to be a new low even in his long and storied history of ill-advised crushes, or that he was frozen in place looking at his coworker’s dick and would really, sincerely have liked to be on his knees.

The problem was solved by Tom blurting out, “later, then,” and fleeing back to his own trailer, where he immersed himself in the latest script edits and waited _hours_ , thanks very much, before he stumbled into the shower and made himself a moaning, weak-kneed wreck full of pitiful, helpless desire, thinking of all the ways he’d like for Chris to fuck him.

Tom prefers to pretend that none of it ever happened. It was a bad day, a day of personal and professional weakness, and nobody ever made strides towards growth by dwelling on how often they think about Chris Hemsworth while masturbating; of this he is certain.

 

\--

 

After spending almost a whole night filming a single damn sequence with far too many moving parts—the bane of his Marvel career, and the sort of thing that makes him yearn for simple, intimate theatre performance like nothing else—Tom doesn’t bother navigating to his own bed; he simply collapses in the first place he finds. Even when Hemsworth and Idris shuffle into the room, hours later, Tom barely stirs. He squints over at them, half-awake and hating the light.

By the counter, Chris has leaned over and appears locked in a silent battle of wills with the coffee machine, staring morosely at the digital time display. “How long do we have?”

Idris grimaces. “Dunno, an hour? Hour and a half, at best.”

“God, fuck,” Chris groans, turning his back on caffeine. “All right, nap time. Move over.”

This last is directed at Tom, but Chris doesn’t actually wait for him to comply, just heaves himself onto the fold-out bed, half on top of Tom with his face buried in Tom’s neck.

“You’re _heavy_ ,” Tom grumbles peevishly, rather than do something extraordinarily stupid.

“Oh, shut up, you’ll live,” says Chris, rubbing his beard vengefully into Tom’s skin.

They shove each other a bit, neither putting their heart into it, and settle in still facing each other, arms comfortably tangled together. It says a lot about their lives that this is routine for them, a habit they fall into anytime they film together — that the steady, slowly deepening sound of Chris breathing himself to sleep is utterly familiar to Tom, soothing as a lullaby.

Tom only half-wakes when Chris gets up to leave, and if he spins a little fantasy and lets himself pretend that things are different — that it’s _their_ bed, one they always share, that none of this is fleeting and that Chris will return to him, again and again, without fail — well.

Imagining hurts no one, himself excepted.

 

\--

 

There’s another reason Tom hasn’t been able to let it go.

Well, truth be told, there are a hundred reasons, ranging from insignificant (the size and shape of Hemsworth’s damn hands) to utterly absurd (Tom’s secret, repressed and terrible belief in love at first sight). But specifically, something _happened_ one night, nearly four years ago, when the cast of _Avengers_ reunited for Comic Con — when Evans demanded they assemble, and all complied with liquor in hand, with smiles and hugs all around.

It felt inevitable, in such an atmosphere, that Tom would be unable to avoid some sort of agonizing encounter with Chris Hemsworth and the Arms That Just Don’t Quit.

They ran into each other in an unlit little corner between the restroom and the balcony, and they were alone, because the others were outside with the music and drinks and the lights of New York City spread below. There was, Tom thought, too much life in the world for it to feel as if nothing existed but him and Hemsworth, half-drunk and alone in the dark.

“Hi there,” Tom offered, with a tipsy little wave. While swaying on his feet, it occurred to him that Chris was very close, and very handsome, and looking at him in a way Tom had never seen before.

“Hey,” Chris said softly, and moved closer.

He didn’t quite push, just slowly walked his body into Tom’s until they collided with a wall, and when Tom made this embarrassing, breathy noise about it, Chris kissed him. Gently, slowly, over and over, hands sliding around Tom’s sides to the small of his back to pull him even closer. He let out a pleased groan when Tom shuddered, unable to resist, and slung an arm around Chris’s neck to deepen the kiss. There was a slick wet sound, barely audible, when he slipped his tongue into Chris’s mouth, and for one gorgeous moment, Chris pressed the heavy half-hard bulge of his cock against Tom’s hip—before staggering back a step, breathing hard.

“Mm. Okay. Night,” he mumbled, patting Tom’s chest, the words slurred and warm.

And that was it. Chris gave that easy, crooked grin that will always do horrible things to Tom’s heart, and he walked away. If, the following morning, Chris recalled a single thing about what happened, he did not speak a word of it to Tom or anyone else. They left it behind.

Were he any sort of reasonable man, Tom would have done his best to forget.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this particular matter, he has always been far from reasonable.

 

\--

 

Few ideas are ever as bad as Tom, in his free time, watching Hemsworth on set. It has been true since _Thor_ and it remains true now, as they go about shooting _Infinity War._

There’s something the matter with Chris’s Thor costume, it seems. Some part that is broken or missing, which has provoked a flurry of activity from the wardrobe department, and has been addressed by having Chris strip to the waist and hand over the armor-and-cape portion of his clothing, leaving him in nothing but boots and fitted leather pants while waiting for a fix. Today’s filming is nearly finished, and no one wants to be the one to make it run ’til tomorrow.

Beside Tom, Chris Pratt lets out a low, impressed whistle. “God, that guy is jacked.”

“Quite,” says Tom, like a strangled parody of posh British actors everywhere.

Unfortunately, it’s telling enough that Pratt does a double take, and whatever face Tom is making, it can’t possibly be blank enough to cover up that little slip. For several long, torturous seconds, there is silence while Pratt looks back and forth between Tom and Chris.

At last, Pratt settles back in his chair in a deliberately casual way that bodes very, very ill.

“Like, I don’t know, you’re tall but not too big. I feel like he could definitely lift you, no problem.”

Good. Great. In case Tom hasn’t had enough traitorous thoughts in this direction, regarding how Chris could just hold him up against a wall like it was nothing. How easily he might manhandle Tom in the process of fucking him senseless, pinning him up against various surfaces and absolutely wrecking him. Tom clears his throat and nonchalantly crosses his legs.

Pratt doesn’t seem to notice, intent on thoughtfully studying Hemsworth. “Is he into dudes?”

For god’s sake. Tom winces so terribly his eyes close. “ _Please_ let this conversation be over.”

“Okay, okay! Fine,” Pratt says, holding out his hands, palm-out, as if one or both bears the written message _I will stop tormenting Tom about his crush_. “Yeah, man, over. Forgotten.”

“Thank you,” he mutters without making eye contact. Unfortunately, the easiest way to do so is to keep watching the beautifully lit, half-naked Chris currently in front of the cameras.

Hemsworth is laughing up at the key grip, patiently waiting while his costume gets fixed and lights are adjusted around him. When the armor is handed back, Chris shrugs into it with a single sinuous movement, and the easy flex of his hips as he adjusts the fit is just…it isn’t fucking _fair_ , Tom thinks desperately, digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand.

Next to him, Pratt leans in closer.

“But on a scale of, like, one to ten, how hard would you hit that?”

Rather than deny it, as he should, or succeed in dredging up a properly scathing retort from his fevered brain, Tom sinks down in his chair and feels himself turn a horrible shade of red, blushing so intensely that every inch of skin feels apt to burst into flame.

“So like a ten,” Pratt decides, nodding sagely—and the worst part is, he isn’t even wrong.

 

\--

 

There is a glossy printed photo propped on his dressing table when Tom arrives for makeup the next morning, rather like a bear trap placed in the path of unsuspecting forest creatures.

After setting down his things, and casting a suspicious glance towards Evans — who continues to quite studiously examine his phone — Tom bends down to inspect the picture. He himself stands in the rightmost foreground, staring away from the camera with rather glazed eyes.

Because in the background of the shot there is Chris Hemsworth, in all his glory, performing pull-ups one-handed without the slightest hint of effort. Every improbably sized muscle in his arm and shoulder is just…bulging, as they do, and beneath the skintight tank top lies the careful, quivering tension of still _more_ muscles. As if that were even remotely necessary.

Tom’s face looks quite like he would expect, which is to say, as if he’s been hit in the head by a ten-ton brick and has furthermore forgotten how to properly close his mouth. _Gaping_ , he thinks, would be a very apt term, in every respect, for what his face is doing here.

He picks up the photograph and places it facedown upon the table with what he would like to believe is the utmost dignity.

“One day, Christopher,” Tom says loftily, “we all will face a reckoning for our actions.”

Evans cackles, lurching forward so precariously that he nearly falls from his chair.

 

\--

 

Not all days are good. Not all of them can be, and accepting this is key, because sooner or later you’ll get knocked on your ass and it really won’t be helpful to fixate on _why_.

Despite knowing this, or trying to, Tom can’t seem to stop the runaway train of his thoughts.

It’s close to sundown, not late enough for bed, even if Tom’s sleep schedule weren’t completely fucked. He’s keyed up and raw-feeling, has been pacing for longer than he cares to admit. The whole thing is stupid and Tom ought to sit down, but when he does it’s so much easier to agonize over things. Movement is helping, he thinks. Or it might.

What happened was this:

Loki has quite a lot of scenes with Thor, and Thor with the _Guardians_ cast, which meant Tom had a chance to chat with Karen Gillan and Zoe Saldana — and jumped at it, of course, because they are brilliant, and fiercely competent, and really, what’s the point of being a _real Hollywood actor_ if he can’t make friends with some of the people he admires? For a while Tom even hoped there might be an arc for Loki and Nebula, teaming up against Thanos. And while that doesn’t look likely to happen, the three of them got on famously, and they’ve fallen in the habit of getting coffee or going out to lunch once or twice a week, schedules permitting.

But Zoe’s filming with Pratt and the rest dragged on today, so Tom and Karen went on their own. And of course paparazzi were skulking about, and of _course_ there are tabloid headlines now shouting about ‘Tom Hiddleston Moves On’—no one need say from what, or whom—and snide commentary he should never have read, hoping _this one isn’t just for the publicity_.

Because of course, a complete fucking stranger writing gossip columns would know—

(They wouldn’t, and they don’t. It shouldn’t bother him.)

But to have dragged Karen into all this, as if hounding Tom wasn’t enough—

(She won’t care a whit, and nothing will change. They are coworkers and friends.)

Not that it matters, what’s damaged or what’s lost, when the press wants a story, does it?

Tom stops and leans his forehead against the cool metal of the refrigerator. He can feel himself getting outright maudlin and he hates that, hates letting things so small and petty affect him.

There’s a knock on his door. Hemsworth; the rhythm always gives it away.

Without bothering to straighten up, Tom calls out, “Yes.”

He turns his head to watch as Chris enters, softly shutting the door behind him, filling up the space like he always does with those massive shoulders. It’s often hard to remember they’re nearly the same height. Harder still, to resist the gravity that always draws Tom closer when they’re alone together. Chris looks at him, head cocked, quiet and clearly concerned.

“Hey,” he says with surprising gentleness. “How are you doing?”

Tom smiles a thin, unsteady smile, unconvincing. “I rather think I hate everything right now.”

“Well, all right, can’t blame you there,” Chris allows him easily, settling in where he stands, leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed, his _arms._ “But, uh, am I included?”

It’s a question so absurd that Tom can scarcely comprehend it. “No, of course not.”

Chris grins at him, visibly startled into delight, which is awful; there can’t be a single person alive who can properly think when Chris is smiling like that. “Right then, we’ll be watching some television. There’s a thing I’ve been meaning to watch. The Great British Baking whatever.”

Despite himself, Tom nearly laughs. “Ah, the whatever. I know it well.”

“Of course you do,” says Chris, moving past Tom to start fluffing and rearranging the pillows on his bed. “We are men of taste.”

“Er. Are we watching this on the bed?”

“Unless you’ve got a better idea.” Chris looks up from the remote, all innocence, as if there are not perfectly respectable chairs they could sit in. He’s flung himself down among the pillows and is lounging on Tom’s bed quite casually, wearing one of his atrociously thin t-shirts, and the degree to which it clings to Chris’s every muscle is bound to drive Tom mad.

He can feel himself starting to blush and can’t possibly deal with it now, so rather than argue Tom drops down onto the bed with his back to Chris. The moment he does, Chris slings an arm over him, heavy and grounding, and the casual possessiveness of it turns Tom’s spine to liquid.

“You don’t need to stay,” he tries to say without stammering.

“Hmph. Not for _you_ ,” Chris agrees, pulling Tom back against his chest; he is a solid, muscled wall of warmth pressed along Tom’s entire body. “Gotta study up on my cake techniques.”

“Oh, is that so.”

Chris makes a low, agreeable sound with his face tucked against Tom’s neck, his breath warm and slow—almost close enough to feel the press of his lips. “Mm. Because _I_ am an artist.”

“A cake artist.”

“Yep.”

“Ridiculous,” Tom says, feeling so fond that his chest aches.

 

\--

 

Of all the things Tom might expect, when there’s a gentle knock at the door of his Brussels hotel room close to midnight—foremost among them, that there’s been yet another room service mix-up between his hotel room and the room of the newlyweds down the hall who appear to be provisioning themselves for an impressive week-long sexual marathon—well, suffice to say it throws Tom off considerably to answer and find, instead of Noah the sweet but directionally challenged Sofitel employee, Chris Hemsworth in a coat and scarf.

“Hey! Cheesecake?”

Tom blinks and opens his mouth around words that simply don’t come out, as Chris slips through the doorway and past him, brushing shoulders with Tom as he goes. “Excuse me?”

“Cheesecake,” says Chris, turning to face Tom and walking backwards into the room while brandishing a small brown paper bag, like it’s normal. “Brought you some.”

“What?”

“You said you like it.”

“I do,” Tom assures him, quite unable to help himself. “You’re in Belgium?”

“Well, sort of. Layover, canceled flight, then the snow hit Heathrow and everyone traveling’s pretty much fucked.” From a second bag, Chris produces a six-pack of beer, and immediately opens a bottle with some device buried in the mess of his keys. “I thought I’d rather visit you than wait around some more.”

“You had a layover…in Brussels?”

Chris huffs and unwinds the scarf from his neck without looking at Tom. “Basically.”

At a certain point, one can really only despair of Chris Hemsworth. He’s the sort of man who gets away with lying because his lies are so _bad_ it feels unsporting to challenge them — and, of course, because he looks like that. “Huh,” Tom murmurs, more to himself, finally shutting the door, before rounding on Chris with a half-sarcastic smile. “Please, do come in!”

“Bad timing? I can leave, if you’re expecting someone.” It’s honestly quite ruthless, the way Chris calls his every bluff.

“No, hush. It’s good to see you.”

They hug, which is always awkward. Chris doesn’t really do hugs, unless other people start them, and it’s an easy thing to forget until he appears to sprout five extra arms, all of which are trying to pat you on the back. The truly sad thing is, that means he’s trying. Playing it safe, for Chris, is more like a carefully motionless acceptance of whatever embrace he’s being given.

(He’ll sleep wrapped around Tom at a moment’s notice, but a hug? You might as well ask Chris to enact some strange and life-threatening alien ritual at gunpoint.)

And Tom, though reluctant to entirely abandon whatever strange sequence of events led to Hemsworth not only being in Belgium at all but _here_ , in Tom’s hotel, can’t help but savor the moment: Chris is massive and solid and warm and he smells amazing. All in all, it’s well worth feeling like Tom is hugging a large and well-meaning mannequin.

Still, he does eventually show mercy. With a strong and lingering sense that this is all incredibly fucking surreal, Tom extracts the little takeout box from the paper bag Chris carried in. He then arranges himself on the bed, legs outstretched, while Chris sits at the little table with his beer.

“Is there some sort of occasion?”

“No, why?”

“Just, um,” —he makes the mistake of looking, and for a moment Tom’s thoughts derail and skid into the sea, watching the motion of Chris’s throat as he swallows— “wondering, is all, if you’ll appear wherever I’m filming now to ply me with desserts.”

“I didn’t just _appear_.”

“Hmm. Didn’t you, though?”

“Eat the damn cake already,” Chris grumbles, cheeks tinged suspiciously pink.

“If you insist.” Inside the box there is indeed a slice of cheesecake, lined with a thick crust of dark chocolate crumbs and drizzled with caramel, the entirety of which looks so good that eating it will almost certainly make him feel ill. Tom suspects it will be worth it.

He lifts up the box to look beneath. “Did it come with any kind of utensil?”

“Oh,” says Chris, suddenly rifling through the bag in which he’d carried the beer. After a brief search, he produces a single solid metal fork, which he twirls in his fingers and extends towards Tom. “They asked if I needed a fork and I said no. Then I realized that probably wasn’t…true.”

It’s hard not to laugh, but Tom manages. “So you bought this?”

“Same place I got the beer, yeah.”

“My Belgian fork,” Tom says reverently, holding it up to the light. “I’ll treasure it always.”

He then applies himself to the cake with great concentration because Chris is smiling at him, that big, crinkle-eyed grin that always, wretchedly, makes Tom go weak in the knees. Even when already sitting down, it feels like too big of a risk.

His life is absurd, Tom thinks, sinking the tines of his fork into the cheesecake, carefully puncturing through the dense crust, and carving off a perfect triangle at the tip. This whole situation, the history behind it, the abhorrent strain of Chris’s shirt across his shoulders, is—

Then Tom actually tastes what he’s eating, and all other thoughts disappear.

“Fuck,” he moans softly, closing his eyes, because it isn’t just good, it’s incredible. The crust crumbles perfectly on his tongue and the filling is smooth as silk, rich and creamy; this cake feels like it could melt in his mouth. “ _Fuck_ , that’s good.”

There’s a heavy, clanking sound of glass meeting wood, such as might be caused by a bottle set down by unsteady hands, and Tom is startled back to earth by it, jarred by the sound and frozen still, unable to escape the shocked hungry look on Chris’s face and a rapid-plummet feeling of _oh god what have I done_.

Tom looks helplessly down at the cheesecake that has betrayed him. “Sorry, I’m— sorry. Got carried away.”

“No, please.” Chris’s voice is hoarse, and even without looking Tom can feel the weight of his gaze on his face, his throat, skimming down his body. “I’m glad you like it.”

There is still, lurking within Tom, a misguided conviction that he can salvage this.

“Yes! Very much,” he says in as bright a tone as possible, flashing a wide false smile without allowing himself to ever really look at Chris. “Thank you.”

This receives approximately the reception it deserves, which is to say that Chris slumps forward with his elbows on his knees, sighs and rubs at his face with both hands.

“All right. Are we ever gonna…talk about it?”

“Uhm,” Tom stammers, feeling suddenly as if his heart might leap straight from his chest, “talk? About what?”

“This?” Chris says rather desperately, gesturing between the two of them. “The staring, the flirting. I kissed you, you kissed me back. That kind of thing.”

It takes Tom a moment to respond, seeing as the world has gone upside-down.

“I, um. I didn’t realize you remembered that.”

Chris stares at him, literally open-mouthed with bewilderment, then raises a hand.

“All right, first off, maybe five drinks were consumed that night, and I’m Australian. You thought _that_ was all it took to get me blackout drunk? That’s—offensive, frankly, to my national pride.”

Tom recovers enough to roll his eyes and nervously flick a crumb at him. “ _So_ sorry.”

“And,” Chris hesitates, as lost as Tom’s ever seen him, something softer and uncertain behind his eyes; he’s looking down at his beer bottle, peeling back the label on one side. “I don’t think I’d forget kissing you. That…sounds pretty impossible.”

With considerable effort, Tom swallows. “So you…”

“I figured it’d be easy to laugh off, pretend it never happened, if you wanted to. Which it seemed like you did, but…you’re kind of hard to read, turns out.”

“Do me a favor and say that to Evans. He’ll laugh himself sick.”

“Right,” Chris agrees, with a quick, forced laugh of his own that makes Tom realize he’s an _idiot_ , a complete and utter fool, and has not in the entirety of this conversation made clear that he does, in fact, want Chris rather desperately.

Tom stands up, more dramatically than he means to, and sets the cake on the bedside table.

“I’ll finish it later,” he says, then climbs onto Chris’s lap and settles there as best he can, given the limited space and how Chris’s knees are digging into his ass. It’s easier to ignore those things when Chris looks at him like that — like he’s absolutely amazed. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Chris says, and tips his chin up towards Tom in a clear invitation.

It’s— still, even like this, it’s surprisingly daunting to kiss him. Tom hesitates, and runs his fingertips along the side of Chris’s hair, and for some reason it’s the deep, purring rumble this coaxes out of Chris that gives Tom the nerve to press their lips together.

He second-guesses almost immediately, and tries it again, so that Chris receives several kisses in quick succession before he gets a hand behind Tom’s neck and holds him still, sliding his tongue along Tom’s lower lip to coax his mouth open. From there, things turn filthy very fast, because Chris is apparently intent on _destroying_ him with slow, wet, messy kiss after kiss. He trails down Tom’s jaw, open-mouthed, with soft flicks of his tongue, sloppy in a way that Tom has never considered appealing and which, as it turns out, he fucking loves.

However, after the fourth time he tries to slide closer and is thwarted by the furniture, Tom is forced to call a halt. “Could we, perhaps, relocate,” he asks, panting and nearly derailed by Chris kissing his throat. “There’s very little room on this chair, and my knees are starting to hurt.”

“Yeah,” says Chris, who has, at some point, unbuttoned Tom’s shirt completely and is running his unfairly large hands up and down Tom’s sides. “We can do that.”

Chris then _picks him up_ , tips him onto the bed and buries his head between Tom’s legs, kissing the obscenely obvious bulge of his cock through the fabric—and Tom doesn’t _mean_ to clamp his thighs around Chris’s head, but when it happens Chris just uses both hands to hold him like that, mouthing the length of Tom’s dick and the sensitive, aching swell of his balls. There’s really only enough sensation to tease him, but sometimes that’s all that’s required. It feels very much like he could come just from this, rocking against the pressure and heat of Chris’s mouth.

It feels like Chris wants him to.

But before Tom can even protest being made to come in his pants like a teenager, Chris unbuttons them, his haphazard trailing kisses and the scrape of his beard going lower and lower, and Tom realizes with an almost frightening jolt of arousal that what’s actually about to happen will be a hundred times more ruinous than _that_.

Chris doesn’t even hesitate.

He pulls Tom’s pants down over his hips and immediately wraps a hand around the base of his cock and _licks_ the head before wrapping his mouth around as much as he can take. There’s very little finesse to it, but there hardly needs to be—Chris’s thumb is stroking up and down the underside of Tom’s cock, and the slick heat of his mouth, when he gently starts to suck—

“Chris,” he all but begs, unable to look away from Chris’s lips around his cock or remember all the good reasons he shouldn’t fuck that soft, plush mouth immediately, “Chris, wait, I’m—“

But instead of waiting, Chris curls his tongue and drags it back and forth until Tom bucks and shouts and comes, helpless to stop it, worked relentlessly through waves of a shattering orgasm by the steady strokes of Chris’s hand and the soft, eager suction of his mouth. Chris makes an earnest, half-successful attempt to swallow, then devastates Tom anew by absently licking come from the edges of his mouth with a soft, interested sound.

“Yeah, I’d do that again,” he murmurs, his voice rough and his eyes dark.

“Oh? Delighted to hear it,” Tom says, dazed. “Get up here.”

This time, Chris heeds him promptly. He crawls along Tom’s body on his elbows and drops down onto him for another slow, filthy kiss, faintly bitter with the taste of Tom’s come lingering between them. Chris presses Tom into the mattress with the sheer weight and size of his body, the length of his cock heavy and hard against Tom’s thigh, and Tom just melts for it, every inch of him blissfully sex-drenched and overheated. Every so often, as Chris kisses him, he grinds against Tom without any real urgency and makes these soft, pleased sounds deep in his chest.

“I hadn’t, uh.” Chris glances down between them and looks almost nervous, as if there’s anything left to be nervous about. “I didn’t count on things necessarily going so well.”

“I… suppose it’s good to hold one’s ego in check?” Tom ventures, unsure what else to say.

“Agh.” Chris briefly directs his pained gaze towards the ceiling but then, perhaps considering it cowardice, meets Tom’s eyes and grimaces in a very apologetic sort of way. “There’s _maaay_ be a condom in my wallet somewhere, and it might not be expired, but that’s about it.”

“ _Oh._ Well, that’s unfortunate.”

“Do you have, uh, anything to—?”

Tom absently licks at his kiss-swollen lips and summons up the shreds of his dignity. In this case, that mostly means trying to glare at Chris. “I am not so far gone for you that I carry upon my person _supplies_ , at all times, on the off chance you might decide to fuck me.”

“But you have to admit, right now it’d be pretty useful.”

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” Tom tells him, and rolls a laughing Chris down onto the floor.

 

\--

 

The _Black Panther_ premiere goes very smoothly, the well-oiled machine of the Marvel franchise helped along by a beautiful night and happy guests, happy critics and a relatively friendly red carpet. Chances abound to sing the praises of this newest addition to Marvel canon, as it should be. And it is good to see everyone, a fact of which Tom reminds himself even when Chris Evans starts making a particular damned bright-eyed and curious face that has never boded well.

“Okay, the staring,” Evans finally says, sidling close. “At you. Is that new?”

Despite the nervous skip of his heart, Tom blinks ingenuously. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“ _Um_ ,” says Evans so meaningfully that Tom looks up at him, then over at Hemsworth, who is in fact watching Tom with wholly casual, unselfconscious interest. The corners of his mouth quirk up when he sees Tom staring back, and the warmth in Chris’s gaze is unmistakeable.

“Oh,” Tom says, aware that he is faintly blushing.

Meanwhile, Evans’ eyes have gone wide as saucers. “Holy shit.”

Defensiveness is, of course, foolish. But really, it’s not as if there’s been a miracle; utter shock seems a tad excessive. It occurs to Tom that he might take umbrage at being teased for so long by Evans and by Pratt (and, on one terrible occasion, by Sir Anthony Hopkins), had they been operating under the assumption that his crush was inherently hopeless and could lead only to ruin.

“I mean not that — you know! I mean, obviously you’re great, I just didn’t know! That he’d — like, I didn’t know! I didn’t know if Chris was — I mean not, I’m not trying to label anybody, and I never thought, like, ‘oh this’ll never happen,’ I just.”

“Didn’t know?” Tom suggests, straight-faced.

“ _Yeah!_ ” Evans has to use both arms to gesture emphatically enough towards Tom. “Exactly! Dude, that’s awesome.”

As ever, it’s hard to resist that enthusiasm; a smile spreads across Tom’s face before he’s entirely conscious of it. “Thank you,” he says, and means it.

They hug because, between the two of them, they are almost constantly in a state of semi-hug, that nebulous state before and after exuberant bear hugs in which another hug is overwhelmingly probable, if not demonstrably on the horizon. They hug like men who have flung their arms optimistically around the neck of Chris Hemsworth only to have their hopes dashed in a catastrophic fashion, and who must shore up their reserves before attempting it again.

“He’s just not _good_ at it,” Tom says morosely when they’ve half-stepped away.

“Yeah, the hug is not his skill set,” says Chris, patting his shoulder. “One time Jenny said it’s like watching a family reunion where one of the people at the party is actually a hostage, and slowly you realize he’s trying to silently signal for help. Well, unless you meant he’s not good at—”

Tom _swats_ at him, mortifyingly enough, swiping the air with an ineffectual _tch’_ ing sound like an old biddy scolding her chihuaua.

“Why on earth would I— _quiet_ ,” he hisses as Evans dissolves into laughter, stumbling slightly in his mirth; Chris actually claps his hands and wheezes a little, so great is the amusement value of Tom’s discomposure. “You are an _embarrassment_ , Christopher,” Tom tells him, quietly and with great severity. “I have absolutely no idea why I put up with any of this.”

Evans suffers one last fit of hysterics before he straightens and wipes at his eyes, clearing his throat mightily as if to dispel one last urge to giggle. “Hug withdrawal.”

“Hug withdrawal,” Tom agrees with a resigned sigh.

They are, at this point, required to go and mingle with other people, which is pleasant enough even if the lights and cameras do from time to time leave spots in Tom’s vision. While tracing a fourth subtle orbit of Chris Hemsworth’s general location, the better to admire the cut of Chris’s suit, Tom fiddles with his own cufflinks and wonders how soon they might slip away for a minute or two. He is wearing a bow tie, and he’d rather like to see Hemsworth remove it with his teeth.

(The answer is “very soon indeed,” but they are almost immediately found and interrupted and returned to the party at large, before Chris can do more than flash a devastating smile and lean in to touch Tom’s face. Both of them accept the misfortune with relative grace; Tom might sincerely wish to be ravished, but this was hardly the place for it to begin with. It’ll keep.)

 

\--

 

It’s been a week since the premiere.

Nine days, to be precise. They haven’t _meant_ to put things off, but neither have they tried to rush it, and busy schedules make for difficult love lives — especially for them, and especially for something just finding its footing. At one point on Wednesday Tom knew he had time and he knew, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that he wanted Chris to be in his apartment immediately, and preferably naked. But Chris was held up by a previous engagement, and by the time a meeting was feasible both of them opted instead to go and have drinks with Evans and Boseman and a few other friends, before they all scattered across the world again.

That night, Hemsworth sprawled more than usual, a knee or a shoulder brushing against Tom with such immensely casual warmth that, between the touching and Evans’ knowing looks at the two of them, Tom felt quite ready to combust. It was an endless, private sort of thrill, keeping secret from the others the irrevocable _change_ and the desire lying thick between them.

Not that all of the waiting has been chaste, of course. There was a lengthy phone call the night before last, which started sweet and ended with Tom describing, in great detail, a fantasy of Chris fucking his throat, egged on by voluble swearing and the quieter, slick, desperate sounds of Chris fisting his cock — and which Tom only regretted a little, at the end, when Chris fell apart groaning his name and he wasn’t there to see it.

It’s understandable, Tom thinks, that they didn’t waste any time tonight. And it’s not that he didn’t try to play the civil host, offering up pleasantries and questions about traffic, but the door of his apartment was scarcely closed before Hemsworth crowded him up against the wall and started kissing his lips, his jaw, his neck, pressing his whole body into Tom — all with Chris still fully dressed, his scarf only slowly unraveling for Tom’s distracted hands, deliciously warm beneath his coat.

In the bedroom, shedding clothes every few feet and tripping into each other, Chris started to hesitate. Not second thoughts, but wordless concern, an unwillingness to take the lead on this less than solid ground. Tom doesn’t mind; there’s little in the world he _could_ mind while flat on his back, talking Chris Hemsworth through fingering him open—coaxing Chris onward even now, when the steady press of Chris’s cock inside him threatens to eradicate all thought.

Chris’s hand is a white knuckled fist in the sheets, his eyelashes fluttering in time with low groans when he slides deeper into Tom, torturously careful. “It’s not too fast?”

“No, please, don’t stop on my account.” _Don’t stop_ , Tom wants to say, but he must be fair.

“I, uh. Might not actually be good at this.”

It’s an odd and quite vulnerable time to bring it up, and Tom considers his response as much as he possibly can, under the circumstances. “Have you…”

“Well, yeah, a couple times. Nothing serious. Hasn’t been a lot of, uh. Feedback?”

“I’d say you’re doing marvelously.”

“Yeah?”

Tom means to answer, but Chris’s hips press flush against his ass and he’s so incredibly, achingly _full_ it makes him dizzy. The sound he makes, when Chris rocks into him as if hoping to press deeper, is probably answer enough. God, his hands are _shaking_ , it’s so much.

“Fuck,” Chris breathes out shakily.

He reaches up and takes Tom’s wrists, pinning them to the bed on either side of his head, and puts his weight onto them until all the breath goes shivering out of Tom’s lungs and he can’t recall how to get it back, how to _exist_ when Chris has him like this.

“All right. Yeah. That’s—” Chris’s voice is low and unsteady. “One fantasy achieved, for sure.”

It’s enough to startle a laugh out of Tom. “For both of us.”

“Yeah?” Chris says again, quietly, with a hopeful half-smile.

“You’re so—” Tom starts to say, but stops himself, because if there is one thing he and Chris have in common it is this: the divide between who they are and what others presume to know about them, the frustration of a million voices claiming to see them clearly. He’d rather not be another person who acts surprised at Chris Hemsworth being sometimes human, and messy, and unsure.

Chris dips down, the pressure on Tom’s wrists increasing, and places a soft, scraping kiss on Tom’s throat. “I’m so…?”

“Beautiful,” he answers quietly. There’s more than one way to be honest.

There’s a terribly vulnerable look in Chris’s eyes, when he looks up at Tom, before he ducks his head again and starts to move in earnest. The muscles in his shoulders, down his back and along his sides are flexing back and forth with such perfect control Tom is light-headed.

It’s easy, comfortable, slow, just the slightest building of tension between them — just the helpless premature throbbing of Tom’s cock, lying untouched against his belly but still twitching occasionally at the sight of Chris naked and so carefully, earnestly fucking him — until Chris angles his hips just so and wrings a startled, half-verbal cry from Tom.

“There,” he gasps, head thrown back against the pillows, trying to recall any words at all. “Like that, again, please.”

It takes a moment to recreate exactly, but Chris is watching him like a hawk now, and when he gets it right this time, he notices. When he finds exactly how much he needs to move so that the ridged head of his cock rubs back and forth in just the right spot to have Tom’s whole body writhing and his inhibitions _vaporized_ , helplessly crying out with every single thrust.

The way Chris smiles is scorching, and entirely too pleased.

“Good?” he rumbles, like Tom isn’t boneless and whimpering on his cock, throat bared, too weak with pleasure to even lift his head. His belly is sticky-wet with how much his cock has been dripping, and he doesn’t even know when that _happened_ , just that every slide of Chris inside him goes so deep Tom’s whole body trembles.

Chris kisses the side of his neck, tenderly, lingering—just that—and Tom _convulses_ , nearly sobbing as he comes between them, with Chris holding his face in both hands and slowly, mercilessly fucking him through it. Until Tom’s every breath is shaking, eyes watering, squirming as the last of his orgasm is wrung from him and _still_ , Chris hasn’t stopped or tried to finish.

He realizes, with a dizzying sense almost-dread that makes him seize a pillow, smash it into his own face and moan, that Chris intends to make him come again.

“Is there—” Tom’s voice catches and breaks, because Chris is still steadily fucking him and he’s so oversensitive it feels like he’s still coming, like he can’t stop. “Is there _anything_ you can do without showing off?”

“Mm, no. I’m a monster.”

“I believe it.”

“Can I kiss you?”

For a moment, Tom simply stares up at him, because of course Chris can kiss him, it’s hard to recall a reason they would do anything _else_ , and every moment without Chris’s mouth on his feels like the cruelest sort of deprivation. “Yes,” he breathes out, and worries it sounds too hesitant. “ _Yes_ , obviously.”

All the uncertainty Chris has been showing just melts away when he kisses Tom, their lips barely brushing before he’s deepening the kiss, coaxing Tom’s mouth open with soft flicks of his tongue. He keeps it up until Tom is moaning softly, then pulls back and starts over again, light teasing brushes of his lips with his hands in Tom’s hair, holding him still.

“Please,” Tom whispers, half-whimpering, and maybe that’s what Chris wanted all along or maybe it’s just what breaks him, but he obliges Tom with a kiss so filthy that the slide of Chris’s tongue echoes down Tom’s spine, like a spark igniting his bones, and he clings shamelessly for leverage to writhe back and forth on Chris’s cock as best he can.

With a low, pleased groan, Chris bites at his throat. “More?”

Almost before the word is spoken, Tom nods. “Yes. _Yes_.”

Chris braces his hands on the mattress and for the first time he puts his strength into it, fucking Tom with brute force that rocks the entire bed. The sounds Tom makes would be absolutely humiliating if not for the way Chris is looking at him.

“Is that…?”

“Yes,” Tom chokes out again. “Harder this time.”

It’s often been said of Chris Hemsworth: he takes direction very well.

There’s no hesitation anymore, no mercy shown except the relief of Chris pinning his arms again, making it so easy to just lie here, trapped, and take it. There’s no stopping this now. Even when the headboard slams dramatically into the wall, even when Tom is reduced to begging and swearing and saying Chris’s name so loudly that surely his neighbors can hear, Chris is relentless.

(Chris is talking too, nonsense phrases that sound like urging, or praise, or utter filth, spoken into the pillows or against Tom’s skin. He’s bent Tom nearly in half, and surely, _surely_ he must be close by the frantic pace of his hips and the tightening of his fingers in Tom’s hair.)

The second orgasm builds in Tom with violence, like a hurricane, like something so explosive he tries to thrash out of his skin to escape it. He’s startled, and briefly offended, by the heavy press of Chris’s palm over his mouth, muffling him, until he hears himself and realizes just how necessary it is.

It’s not an entirely human sound, the keening wail that escapes Tom when he comes again. His legs cramp and he clenches almost painfully around the girth of Chris’s cock inside him, arching up off the bed as wave after wave of it hits him. He is biting Chris’s fingers and it sounds as if Chris likes that very, very much. The aftershocks leave Tom numb, reeling, and he comes down from it feeling so drained and drowsy and warm he can scarcely keep his eyes open.

But then Chris pulls out of him and Tom hates that, he needs—Chris has to—

“On,” he mumbles, fumbling at Chris’s hands. “On me.”

The sound Chris makes, when he understands, is bestial, raw. “Fuck— _fuck,_ Tom—”

He comes in messy streaks across Tom’s belly and chest, a bit even gets on his _chin_ , and Tom is so horribly turned on by it that he has to close his eyes and let the pulsing ache in his spent and softening cock subside, because he absolutely cannot start this over again.

For a while Chris lays there, half on top of him, placing soft and half-apologetic kisses on all the places he’s bitten, the vivid red-and-pink of nails and teeth and the scrape of his beard. Tom likes how gentle he is; he likes how it stings on the tender spots anyway. Chris is thorough in all he does, and Tom likes knowing that, too.

Finally, Chris nuzzles his arm with a rueful, rumbling chuckle. “We need to get you in the shower.”

“I’m not moving.”

“You’ll regret it.”

“But I’ll live,” Tom counters, angling his face until finally their lips brush. It’s a heady feeling with Tom’s mouth already kissed nearly raw, tingling. They trade a few lazy, uncoordinated kisses before Chris, who isn’t _fair_ , scoops Tom off the bed and half-hauls him into the bathroom.

“You’re a traitor,” he mumbles, and licks Chris’s neck.

Its nice, feeling the thrum of tension when Chris laughs. “I hear you’ll live.”

It’s difficult for Tom to keep his eyes open, let alone maintain his balance when he’s so much stumbling, well-fucked putty. There are, he sees with new clarity, so many _parts_ to the process of bathing: the application of soap, the scrubbing, the rinsing. It feels like an endless and terrible ordeal, but Chris stands behind him to prop him upright, chin resting on Tom’s shoulder, his huge hands rubbing soap into the mess on Tom’s skin. There are certainly worse things.

They’ve nearly rinsed off the last when it occurs to Tom he’s been subjected to the most absurd and heinous lie ever told, and he turns his head to look at Chris.

“I’m sorry. Did you say you _might not be good at this?_ ”

Chris tries to kiss him while laughing, which only works because Tom is horribly besotted and every brush of Chris’s smiling mouth feels like light, like lightning, filling him up to the brim with uncontainable happiness. “Well,” Chris says consideringly, nuzzling against Tom’s cheek, rough beard and soft swollen lips and a hint of grinning teeth, “I might be all right.”

 

\--

 

“So, on a scale of one to ten,” says Pratt, not loudly, but while very obviously casting his eyes back and forth between Tom, who stands beside him, and Chris Hemsworth, on the other side of the room; Pratt lifts up his eyebrows at Tom and waggles them. “Yeah?”

“Eighteen, at least,” Tom tells him, helpless to stop smiling.

They bump fists, rather awkwardly, but when Pratt nods it is with great enthusiasm. “Nice.”

A few moments later, Chris catches Tom’s eye, smiles and winks at him, a quiet flash of affection that makes the fragile contents of Tom’s heart bloom, warm and sure, and —

— it _is_ nice. It really, really is.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Terrible RPF Mistakes™ can also be found on [tumblr](https://psikeval.tumblr.com)


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